Free Last Bus to Wisdom by Ivan Doig Page A

himself that very question. “My deputy’s out on a domestic dispute call, and the jail’s full of rangutang drunks from Saturday night. Not the way I want, doing this by Hound.” He looked around the bus with distaste. “But it’d be just like the master criminal here to bail out of the patrol car if I drove him. Tried that last time, didn’t you.”
    â€œWe weren’t going that fast.”
    The sheriff laughed nastily. “Not gonna be bailing out of the bus, are you.”
    â€œTo tell the truth, I don’t see how.”
    â€œDamn right you don’t. You’re on a one-way ticket back to behind bars and that’s that.”
    â€œYou needn’t be quite so tickled about it. I’m not exactly public enemy number one.”
    â€œOh, hurting your feelings, am I. Ain’t that just too damn bad.” The sheriff glanced up at the composed figure nearly a head taller than him and complained, “I’ve got a whole hell of a lot of better things to do than pack you back to Wolf Point, you know. Do you have to be such a pain in the britches? First you get in a fight with some fool bartender because you think you’ve been shortchanged and tear up the bar.” So much for my imagining this was an escaped murderer, being delivered to the cold scales of justice. “Then you keep breaking out of that half-assed excuse for a jail they have over there and showing up back here in my jurisdiction.” With his face squinched like one of those apple dolls that have dried up, the sheriff groused, “Can’t you for christ sakes light out in some other direction for a change? Go get yourself a haying job somewhere? Stacking hay is about your speed, Harv.”
    â€œI explained that, Carl,” the prisoner said patiently. “My girlfriend Letty waits tables in Great Falls. How else am I supposed to get to see her?”
    â€œI KNOW HER! Leticia, I mean, it was right there in pink!”
    My bray startled both men, their heads whipping around to scrutinize me. “She was here on the bus, see,” I gave out the news as fast as I could talk, “so I met her and we talked for a long way and she was really nice to me, boy, she’s a piece of work.” I reported further to the surprised prisoner, “She told me all about you, sort of. The trucker part.”
    â€œOh, swell,” the sheriff said sardonically. “Now she’s running around the countryside, too. What is it about you two, claustrophobia?”
    The prisoner ignored the sarcasm, leaning forward to see around the sheriff. “Why was she on the bus, my friend? Start at the beginning.”
    It seemed a good time to keep the beginning close to the end. “She got sick and tired of uppity customers at the Buster hotel, so she’s gonna try Havre.”
    â€œHavre.” The men looked at each other as if that were the bottom of the barrel.
    Harv recovered enough to maintain, “Letty’d have her reasons.”
    â€œEh, her,” the sheriff scoffed. “The cause of all this. Isn’t that so, loverboy?”
    â€œOnly because you arrested me when I was on my way to go see her in Great Falls, before Havre came up,” the prisoner said, patient as paint. “I was hitchhiking just fine until I had to stop for a bite to eat.”
    â€œFor crying out loud,” his captor groused. “I leave the office for lunch at the Highliner Cafe like usual, and there you come waltzing up the street, big as life. What was I supposed to do?”
    â€œYou could have looked
down
the street.”
    â€œOh, sure, wink and let a jailbreaker run around loose, even if it’s you.” The sheriff shook his head in disgust. A mean little smile crept in after that expression. “Anyway, this Letty sounds like she isn’t waiting for you, Harv old kid.”
    â€œWe’ll fetch up together, sooner or later,” the big quiet man in cuffs